VirtualDub Author Stymied by Trademark Troll

trifish writes "The author of VirtualDub wrote on his blog that 'someone has registered "VirtualDub" as a "word mark" in Germany as of June 6, 2006 and is now sending out notices to people in that country demanding money for so much as mentioning the program and linking to the SourceForge download from their website.' Well, I confess that only now I fully understand why Linux, Mozilla, TrueCrypt, and other open source projects register their names as trademarks."

Re:mod him down!

[voice_of_all_reason]

Flamebait -- Violates known laws of physics

Hey, when inventions can actually do that, then we have a good deal to talk about. You're confusing it with inventions that claim to violate these laws.

//Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Re:mod him down!

[nahdude812]

I regularly positively moderate people even when I don't agree with what they've said. I'm operating on the meaning of the moderation words themselves rather than whether or not I philosophically agree. Most mods, however, seem to see the moderation system as a way to promote personal agendas which is IMHO an abuse of the moderation system. So I think what you're saying is a good idea, because it might cause more people to be modded up even if their view differs from the community.

The unfortunate side effect of me using the moderation system as I believe it was intended to be used (rather than the way it's actually used by most of the mods) is that I get periodic unfair moderation metamoderations, which comes with a karma hit =(. This actually disencourages me from moderating, which is unfortunate since I try very hard to be an impartial mod and consider whether their post has validity, not whether I agree with it. I'm not willing to karma whore to make up for lost moderation karma, so in this sense the system favors the abusers.